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07 January 2015

If There Be Thorns (Dollanganger, Book 3)

V.C.
ANDREWS

Synopsis
from back cover: Fourteen-year-old
Jory was so handsome, so gentle. And Bart had such a dazzling
imagination for a nine year old.

Then the lights came on in
the abandoned house next door. Soon the Old Lady in Black was there,
watching their home with prying eyes, guarded by her strange old
butler. Soon the shrouded woman had Bart over for cookies and ice
cream and asked him to call her "Grandmother."

And
soon Bart's transformation began...

A transformation that
sprang from "the book of secrets" the gaunt old butler had
given him... a transformation fed by the hint of terrible things
about his mother and father... a transformation that led him into
shocking acts of violence, self-destruction and perversity.

And
now while this little boy trembles on the edge of madness, his
anguished parents, his helpless brother, an obsessed old woman and
the vengeful, powerful butler await the climax to a horror that
flowered in an attic long ago, a horror whose thorns are still wet
with blood, still tipped with fire....

...the
dialogue is clunky and unrealistic, and I can't imagine a world where
people cry out the (sometimes lengthy) speeches these characters are
saddled with. And there is much overuse of exclamation points...

So
I'm pleased to report that neither of those problems assailed me
while reading IF THERE BE THORNS. The one page prologue is narrated
by Cathy, wherein she tells us this is her sons' stories. After that
the chapters alternate between fourteen year old Jory, Cathy's
sensitive ballet loving son with first husband Julian, and ten year
old Bart, her clumsy awkward son with her mother's second husband,
also called Bart. Cathy and Chris are now living together as husband
and wife, and the boys believe their step-father is the younger
brother of Cathy's second husband, Paul.

When
an old lady, always shrouded head to toe in black, moves into the
mansion next door with her elderly butler, Jory and Bart are
disappointed to lose their playground, especially since no children
move in. But she and her butler soon weave a spell over Bart – the
old lady encourages him to call her Grandma and plies him with sweets
and toys and a dog and much love and attention, while the butler
tells him stories about his real father and his great-grandfather. At
first Bart thinks the stories are just that, made up lies, but as he
reads Malcolm Foxworth's journal, he seems turn into an old man
himself, convinced that his mother is a sinner and must be saved from
hell fire.

After
the first two chapters, which are titled “Jory” and “Bart”,
you can tell almost immediately which brother is narrating as the
author gives them distinctive voices.

As
Cathy and Chris helplessly watch their secret life start to unravel
and the repercussions visited on their sons, the tension amps up and
up, so that during the last third of the book I was almost holding my
breath at times. With the focus on the boys rather than Chris and
Cathy, this entry in the series feels less like a “guilty
pleasure”, and not quite as trashy as the first two books. A
mesmerizing read that I raced through.

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